1. Field of the Invention
This application is directed to an overhead storage system for boats wherein the boats may be manipulated by one or more overhead transfer units that can lift or elevate the boats and maneuver them into vertically oriented storage cells or into vertical stacks without cell guides, all without the need to use conventional cranes and forklifts and in such a manner as to maximize storage space by eliminating the need for internal isles for manipulating and/or boat handling equipment.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Boat owners have a choice of trailing their boats to or from launch sites or maintaining them in docking facilities such as wet boat slips at commercial marinas. In off season, however, the boats must often need to be stored in a dry dock manner such as to be protected from adverse weather conditions. Some owners opt to store smaller pleasure boats in home garages or under cover of some structure that will protect the boats from direct contact with the elements such as sun, rain, ice, hail and snow.
Others are willing to pay to have their boats stored in covered boat slips available at many marinas or on trailers in storage yards of such marinas. Under such conditions, not only are the boats subject to possible adverse weather conditions, but they are also subject to possible vandalism.
In order to provide maximum protection and safety for smaller stored boats, many owners are willing to pay for secured, interior, dry dock warehouse type storage wherein boats are elevated by fork lifts or special traveling cranes that place the boats on storage racks within an enclosed facility. In most such facilities, only one vertical set of racks is positioned on opposite sides of each isle that is traversed by the boat handing vehicle or lift. In most conventional storage facilities, the storage capabilities are also limited by the size and vertical reach of the forklifts and other carriers used to elevate boats into storage racks or bins.
As the space along the waterways becomes increasingly more congested and expensive, there is a need to provide an alternate to such conventional methods of boat storage which provides for maximizing the storage capacity of enclosed storage areas to thereby increase the number of safe and preferred enclosed storage facilities but also to make storage systems more cost effective to thereby reduce the storage costs to boat owners.